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Small Drupal

Last updated October 31, 2013.

Aim: The Small Drupal initiative aims to ensure that Drupal remains accessible to small organizations in version 8 and beyond.

Background

Drupal 8 includes major architectural changes that are designed to meet the needs of enterprise-level adopters. While some of the changes may be beneficial to smaller organizations, others may present significant barriers.

The Backdrop project has spurred important and overdue discussion about the implications of Drupal 8 for smaller organizations. While Backdrop may address some of the need, there's a lot more that can be done in Drupal itself as well.

Small organizations have been a critical base for Drupal. The CivicSpace Drupal distribution - designed for small and medium sized activist groups - fed many early improvements into Drupal core, including the core installer. Many key Drupal contributors began small. For example, Drupal 8 core maintainer Nathaniel Catchpole (catch) came to Drupal through work for a local labour organization.

Initiative components

Define target user profile. What are small organizations and what are their typical resources and requirements vis-a-vis website technology?

Analyze Drupal 8. With small Drupal requirements clarified, how does Drupal 8 measure up? What areas will present particular challenges or barriers?

Action for access. What concrete actions can address the identified barriers? What can we do now - ahead of Drupal 8's release - to ensure that small sites and organizations aren't left behind?

Yes, we are a two-people website setup service provider. And the red tape to set up a useful Drupal IDE on a windows computer doesn't get any easier introducing Symfony2. My exit strategy: Wordpress (Query Wrangler plugin!) or Backdrop. I loved Drupal and its community but I don't care about catering for the Forbes 500 companies, I care for small businesses and an accessible code. Sometimes I get the feeling that the high-ranking Drupal managers lost the perspective of being utterly dependent on the next project as we freelancing coders are.

Unfortunately there has been some miscommunication and misunderstanding, but it would be terrible if people were to leave the Drupal project and go off as we wouldn't have the variety of experiences making a great CMS. You mention that there are 2 of you in your organisation and describe yourself as freelance coders, well sometimes to ensure great quality and take pride in the work you do we need to learn new things otherwise none of the new technology would be here for us to use and enjoy.

Drupal 8, and this 'Small Drupal' project needs help from people like yourself who have concerns and they should be addressed. I see you are in Germany, have you attended a Drupal Camp or tried discussing this with your local community? If not I would advise you do, and talk to relevant people who can help. If you are concerned that Drupal has changed for the worse, there will be others feeling similar and we as a community need you to speak up and help us to address those concerns. Don't just abandon ship, we need all the people we can get.

I started as a site builder not being able to code more than HTML & CSS and am now contributing D8 core patches through great mentors at events such as Drupal Dev Days in Szeged & Drupalaton, and there will be plenty of opportunities for you and others to do the same :)